A combinatorial Yamabe problem on two and three dimensional manifolds (Q2225901)

One of the most important problem in differential geometry is the Yamabe problem, that is the existence of a Riemannian metric of constant scalar curvature conformally equivalent to a fixed Riemannian metric on a smooth manifold. This geometric problem is equivalent to the existence of a positive solution of a nonlinear elliptic partial differential equation, whose nonlinearity has a critical growth with respect to the Sobolev embeddings. The study of the existence of solutions of the Yamabe problem has been the subject of deep and extensive research both in differential geometry and partial differential equations, with applications, for instance the positive mass theorem in general relativity. In this paper the authors define a new discrete curvature on two- and three-dimensional triangulated manifolds, which is a modification of the well-known discrete curvature on these manifolds. The new curvature respects the scaling exactly the same way as Gauss curvature does. Moreover, the new discrete curvature can be used to approximate the Gauss curvature on surfaces. Then the authors study the corresponding constant curvature problem, which is called the combinatorial Yamabe problem, by the corresponding combinatorial versions of Ricci flow and Calabi flow for surfaces and Yamabe flow for 3-dimensional manifolds. The main analytical tools used are a discrete maximal principle and a variational principle.